Navigating Identity
ssociate Professor of Psychology Barbara Thelamour investigates how race, ethnicity, culture, and relationships shape the lives of Black immigrant adolescents and emerging adults. As primary investigator of Swarthmore’s Identity, Culture, Immigration (ICI) Lab, she works closely with students, colleagues, and Philadelphia community partners to explore how youth navigate school, identity, and belonging. As a child of Haitian immigrants, she brings deep personal understanding to questions she studies. Below, she shares what inspires her work, what students bring to it, and how that continues to evolve.
What drew you to Swarthmore?
All of my career since graduate school has been at liberal arts colleges, so Swarthmore already felt familiar. When the Psychology Department created this position — centering the psychological study of race, ethnicity, and culture that allowed me to infuse my educational psychology background — it felt like the perfect fit. I also loved the idea of working with such sharp students who are excited about research. And being just outside a major city mattered a lot: I wanted to continue my research with immigrant communities, and access to Philadelphia has made that possible.
I’m interested in how race, ethnicity, and culture shape the everyday lives of immigrants, especially Black immigrants from African and Caribbean countries. In psychology, this population is still pretty understudied. When they come to the U.S., they have to navigate what it means to be Black here, which often isn’t how they identified in their home countries. I study how that adjustment unfolds for adolescents and emerging adults and how it affects their development, their school experiences, and their relationships with peers, teachers, and parents. Those dynamics, in all their complexity, are what really drive my work.
When did these issues begin resonating for you?
I had been thinking about these issues long before I realized they were researchable. Growing up in Georgia, I was constantly aware of the differences between my experience and that of my Black American peers — different languages at home, parents with a foreign accent, different cultural expectations. When I went to college, I met other Black immigrant students and recognized real commonalities in our stories. In graduate school, I realized I could actually study this topic, especially since scholars in other fields were already exploring it. The work feels even more pressing with the ramping up of immigrant detention and policing.
What are the goals of the Identity, Culture, Immigration Lab?
I want the lab to be a collaborative space — students, campus colleagues, and community partners all working together to produce scholarship that elevates the perspectives of populations that are not often considered in psychology. I also want the lab to be a hub for doing meaningful, community-engaged psychological research. One major project began when [Associate Professor of Educational Studies] Elaine Allard ’01 invited me to join her project in a North Philly high school where a Swarthmore alum teaches in the ESL program. The students there are mostly Latino, with growing numbers of Haitian and Vietnamese students. This arm of the project focuses on how they navigate relationships across culture and language. We want to give the findings from this work back to the teachers who might be able to use it to plan future teaching and student support efforts.
What do Swarthmore students bring to your work?
So much. I always tell them that they bring their experiences and knowledge, and I bring the research toolkit — and together we can do really exciting work. Students come with different disciplinary backgrounds, which helps spark new research questions and data collection approaches. Their energy keeps our many projects moving, whether it’s maintaining community connections or keeping data collection on track. They help translate surveys, host high schoolers on campus, give tours, and help volunteer at the school. Truly, I couldn’t do half of what I do without them.